Silent Hunter

by Charles D. Taylor

  Sensing the awkwardness in his last words, she was immediately sorry. She opened her eyes and smiled. “I’m just kidding.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I hope I wasn’t mean.”

  “No. Not at all.” His words remained tentative.

  She could tell by the expression on his face that he didn’t expect to be treated this way aboard his own command. “I really am sorry. I guess I’m just punchy when I’m catching forty winks. Let’s face it. You’ve never been at sea with a woman before. If it didn’t make you uneasy sometimes, you’d be a very strange person.”

  Now it was Snow’s turn to be wary. There was something enticing about Carol Petersen, something he’d toyed with since the day he’d first met her. One part of him, the part he desperately wanted to exercise right this moment, was pure submariner; there were some technical questions to discuss with a member of his crew. The second part was the hungry male who found this dark-haired woman more appealing than any he’d encountered in many years—was she that appealing? Or just the only available female? But in the back corridors of his mind lurked the Hal Snow he understood best, the one who had been divorced twice and was too street-smart.

  “We’ve got company,” he said. Her eyebrows rose in question. “Two Soviet boats, one an Alfa who’s probably trying to get well under us, another Victor to the north trying to cut us off at the pass. Andy Reed’s running some interference for us . . . and it is his game,” he emphasized. “But I’d like to play some games of our own with that computer of yours. No telling when we might be on our own. Now’s the time to see what your baby can do for us.”

  “Do I have time to grab something first . . . like a cup of coffee?”

  “Sure.” Then he added, “Having any second thoughts about Caesar?” He had to reassure himself of what that computer, or better yet Carol Petersen, could accomplish before they dived under the icepack. His reasoning never changed: the computer had to be double-checked—just in case. In his mind, no computer possessed the innate instincts of a true submariner.

  “The only second thought I have is that I don’t have someone else trained to handle that monster when I’m grabbing a nap.”

  “This is only the second day. Imagine when—” he began with a note of authority.

  “Don’t bother,” she reacted. “I can imagine what it’s going to be like after we’ve been at sea for a week. Come on, let’s get it done.”

  Caesar was located on the lowest deck directly under the control room, and just forward of the reactor compartment in one of those sterile, doctor’s office-looking rooms. Four remote units were located on the right as they entered. The opposite wall contained windows that looked in on the gray, upright boxes containing Caesar, The other wall was literally a giant cathode ray tube.

  “Are we going to run anything serious from here, or just play?” Carol inquired as they stepped inside.

  “Play,” Snow answered casually as his eyes roamed about an area of his command that he knew less than he should about. “Play games, as in war games. But we’re going to create the scenario here.”

  Carol switched on one of the remotes and punched in her code, “Are you concerned with the guests who seem to be joining us?”

  Snow nodded.

  “Okay. We probably want to use the big screen. I assume you want to move them around the ocean a bit?”

  “There’s one element that bothered me from the start of this whole operation, maybe because it never seemed to bother the consortium. I’m the target . . . or Imperator’s the target . . . for the Russians, whether you consider the boats coming in now or the ones who’re going to be waiting under the ice. Andy Reed’s commanding the operation, calling the shots, but I’m stuck here riding the target and I’m not often going to be able to talk with him or read his mind. I’m going to have to act independently under certain circumstances—Andy and I talked about this before—and I like to anticipate . . .”

  “You want to consider an infinite number of possibilities open to you by considering an infinite number of reactions available to your opposition.” She grinned. “I could keep you here a week and Caesar here would keep spitting out possibilities until you cried for mercy.”

  “No, that’s not it so much. I know pretty well what their boats are capable of and know how their captains are trained. I’ll provide the probabilities, and Caesar can take it from there.”

  Carol Petersen glanced over her shoulder as she tapped basic data into the computer. “I thought you’d been programmed for every possibility, Captain Snow. Is there something they actually left out?” It was impossible to tell if she was serious or joking.

  “Many submarine captains in the past who relied solely on themselves are resting comfortably on the bottom. But there’s a number of us still alive and healthy who rely on what we know about the other guy.”

  There was a touch in Snow’s voice that she remembered from that morning. It wasn’t anything that bothered her specifically. It was more an undercurrent, a tonal quality that seemed to insinuate more than he was saying. He’d never shaken the belief that submarines were no place for women. Yet he was commanding one that carried a woman in a critical role. Snow had told the members of the consortium he saw no problem with a woman on a civilian ship during his initial interview with them. It was only after he’d signed the contract that he realized this bore no relation to a civilian operation. He was gradually coming to the understanding (though he tried to force it back in the recesses of his mind) that he was probably more affected by Carol Petersen than any of the other men aboard. It was disconcerting, and it was a situation he had to come to grips with before he could have Imperator fully under his command.

  “Want me to key in the submarines in our vicinity?” she asked.

  “First, let’s get the big screen on a scale that covers the Aleutians. I want to include Olympia and that Russian heading in her direction. He directly affects the one heading for us.”

  “It’s coming up now,” she replied, looking over her shoulder at the screen. “Tell me if the scale’s right.” Snow never ceased to be amazed by Imperator’s technology—so far beyond the submarines he understood. The huge screen, which almost completely covered the adjacent wall, took on a gray-green hue. There was no sound, nothing to indicate that anything had been energized. The screen changed color gradually and symbols for the various submarines were accurately defined in their relative locations. The Aleutian Islands hung in a half moon across the top of the screen.

  “Put in their latest course and speed.”

  “Already there,” she answered. “I just borrowed whatever’s already in the memory. As long as we’re tracking them, the computer updates all data every half minute.” Her brows knit as she glanced over at him. “You really don’t know a hell of a lot about Caesar, do you?”

  “I don’t need to if you’re here.” There was that subtle undertone again. Snow immediately regretted it as soon as he’d spoken. It seemed no different than a remark he might have made to his navigator while glancing at the chart. Yet there had been something implied that bothered Snow, more as Imperator’s commanding officer than anything else.

  The exercise evolved much as he had anticipated. The deep-diving Russian attempted to position itself to force Imperator into evasive or protective maneuvers that would provide valuable data to the Russians. Anything they could relay by satellite to Danilov would be to their advantage.

  Andy Reed’s orders were to keep Houston ahead of Imperator, with Helena assigned to maneuver with the Soviet boat, moving into a blocking position, if necessary. The most dangerous possibility would be for the Russian to attempt a position underneath Imperator, between her and Helena, and realizing that, Hal Snow experimented with the idea of increasing depth if the Russian were directly under him. The idea might work initially according to the computer, but Caesar also pointed out the damage that could be done to Imperator’s underside, depending on the location of the much smaller Russian, if they made contact. So in
the end, the idea was only viable in an extreme situation. And, according to the computer, a solution could only be delivered at the time events were actually taking place.

  After studying Caesar’s limited projections, Snow returned to paperwork in his cabin, and leafed through reports on spaces and machinery within Imperator that he’d never inspected himself. She was no different than an aircraft carrier in size, and Snow doubted that any man had ever toured every single compartment and void within a carrier. Her ballast tanks were greater in volume than the capacity of many tankers that still plied the world’s oceans. To pass from Imperator’s bow to her stem involved a trip of much more than her overall length. There were ladders, catwalks over machinery, numerous watertight doors to open and secure, and passageways that would end with a sharp turn to port or starboard to bypass a secure space. Not only was an interior tour not a straight line, it was a maze, and so complex that no single individual could claim detailed knowledge of Imperator’s entire length.

  Going through the reports, Snow found his mind wandering. The cause was Carol Petersen, but she wasn’t the immediate subject of his thoughts. Instead, he was contemplating the most unpleasant memories of his two wives.

  The first, like him, had been much too young. They’d married shortly after his graduation from the academy. It had seemed the right thing and, in retrospect, they were probably in love at the time. But she’d been as irresponsible five years later as she had been when they’d first met. She loved the uniforms and the excitement of the military life at first, and Hal Snow was the answer to a young girl’s romantic dreams—or so it seemed.

  She was unable to adjust to the rigors of his nuclear training, the reality of extended deployments, or the ensuing years on submarines without shore duty. There was no romance in any of that. And those poor kids born in the first five years had never been the answer either. In the end, if there was one thing she considered revenge for the romantic Hal Snow who never really existed, it was to move away with the children so that he became a stranger to them. Hal Snow never forgave her for that. He never did know his children. Even today, if someone were to ask him their birthdays, he’d often resort to the dates in his wallet. Only on rare occasions could he admit to himself what an irresponsible father he was—more often he was able to convince himself it was their mother’s fault.

  His second marriage, to the girl who romanced him shortly after he’d been given his first command, had been short-lived. She came along for the ride, a social climber from a military family. She intended to show off her husband’s dolphins, the scrambled eggs on his hat, and his command-at-sea star to her set. She had been a lousy lover, a lousy cook, a lousy homemaker—a dreary’ litany Snow could still recite in his sleep. But what had bothered him the most with her, the one thing that had really hurt him—the only thing—was that she was a tramp. Sleeping around was unacceptable enough, but the fact that she did it in the confined submarine community was inexcusable. Snow often wondered if she was much of the reason he’d eventually resigned from the navy—partly because she’d been screwing around with too many senior officers. Or was it because he suspected the promotion boards knew what she was doing? Either way, it had been time for him to go.

  After the second time around, Snow promised himself that he was going to be a loner. It was much easier that way. He’d had two wives that had made his life miserable, and he had two kids he could lose track of for six months at a time. Carol Petersen wasn’t as good-looking as either of them, but one thing he could say for sure—she was one hell of a lot smarter than the two of them put together—and she was a lady. For all the powers of concentration that he prided in himself, here he was thinking about her again, even comparing her to the others—while two Soviet submarines were closing Imperator on an intelligence mission that could turn extremely dangerous any moment.

  At his age, things should fall into place in a logical, systematic way. He knew they should. Then Snow sighed and shook his head knowingly. But they never do. . .

  Lucy Reed was a devoted navy wife—one oriented exclusively to her husband and his career, in that order. There had been times when she considered the idea of a job once the kids were off to college. A lot of her friends were doing that and they were loving it. One of them even called it a reclamation project; she was reclaiming an individual within herself that she’d all but forgotten. It sounded good to Lucy at first, but then she had considered the woman’s husband and concluded that, given the same man, she would have been walking the streets looking for any kind of work long before.

  Being Lucy Reed, the wife of a man tagged as “a bright prospect” early on by the navy power structure, was quite enough for her. But much of that realization could also be called hindsight. She couldn’t have gone back to work when the last of the five kids went off to college because the Reeds, quite unexpectedly, had been surprised by a sixth child just when they were relieved that the toughest teenage years were almost over. She’d often told her friends that children were social animals, fun to compare to each other when you and all your friends in their twenties were surrounded by them all day. But when an infant appeared as you’re nearing forty, and all your friends are enjoying a new lifestyle, you learn more about the individual child. Both Lucy and Andy Reed found the new addition both challenging and appealing from their advanced perspective. They were sure it forced them to remain young.

  Puttering around her kitchen now, preparing lunch for young Kevin who was home from school with a cold, Lucy’s thoughts circled for a moment, then centered on her husband. When he’d gone to sea as a junior officer, even as a captain, it seemed a perfectly normal thing. It was part of her life. Managing a large family with her husband often gone was standard for a navy wife—and she had been good at it.

  But now, when Andy went to sea, without mentioning a word until just before he departed, it was something she couldn’t get out of her mind. Tradition be damned! Admirals don’t run off to sea like that!

  At least Kevin wasn’t difficult to handle yet. After five kids so close in age, managing him was still a breeze. His brothers and sisters had monopolized every waking minute at one time, not to mention any worries she might have considered when Andy had gone to sea in the past. Now with one child and so much time to speculate, a gnawing fear crept into her thoughts, something alien, frightening, a pervasive intruder that could not be dismissed. While young Kevin watched television from his bed, Lucy made herself a cup of tea and sat at the kitchen table staring out the window. The cherry trees were gorgeous, almost past their peak. She wanted desperately to be outside cleaning up the winter yard, but the thoughts taking hold in her mind blended into the headlines in the papers and on the nightly news.

  There was no doubt in her mind that Andy was involved. She accepted that. But admirals normally worked from desks. Hers was at sea and he’d said nothing about returning. Momentarily, she wished her mind was occupied by one of those jobs her friends held. Then she remembered how often she and Andy had talked about how lucky they were to be together; they could have each other completely when a free day arose rather than living in two separate working worlds. When Andy needed a day off, they could sail together. With the kids at school they could pack a lunch and head for the boat early in the morning—while most of their peers were working in two separate worlds.

  No, she didn’t really yearn for the job that would occupy her leisure time. She relished the position she had in life, of being the partner of Andy Reed, who needed her so very much. She was satisfied to be a navy wife—and both of them were so happy that Kevin had arrived.

  Then she thought about Kevin upstairs with that nasty cold and wondered how Andy was doing right now. One of his only complaints about late fatherhood was the childhood diseases that seemed so much easier to acquire as he grew older.

  Andy Reed begrudgingly acknowledged the fact that he, too, was getting a cold. While most admirals managed to avoid the familial germs except for contact with their grandchildren, An
dy and Lucy Reed learned to live again with the common cold as the result of their surprise arrival eight years before. While the rest of their family was in college or working, young Kevin could still seek out the most common germs in third grade and deliver them to his parents.

  There was no place Admiral Reed would prefer less than a submarine when he was suffering from the common cold. At home, there was no one like Lucy to sympathize. While her willingness to break out the brandy at least improved his morale, there was no way he would ask the pharmacist mate for a tot from the locker. And with a runny nose, itchy throat, and plugged ears, it required all of his concentration to remain attentive to the unfolding tactical scene. The Russian submarines had made their move. There was little opportunity to sneak off for a nap, or even to feel sorry for himself.

  Reed blew his nose and, trying to keep a reasonable distance from his operations officer, asked, “What’s the time to intercept for the one headed toward Olympiad.”

  “If she maintains current speed, Admiral, I’d say about six hours . . . around zero-five-hundred tomorrow morning. But she’s got the horses if she wants to get there quicker. She’s waiting for something . . . I’m not sure what.”

  “Waiting for Imperator to get closer. That’s what,” Reed said hoarsely. “They probably figure their chances of getting some solid readings are better with two boats than one, but they’re not taking any chances.”

  The ops officer studied Reed’s face. “They’d just as soon take Olympia out as anything else I can think of. Is that what you figure, sir?”

  Reed nodded, massaging his eyes slowly. They were sore and tired. “At this point, I think they figure Imperator’s important enough to go to just about any length.” He cleared his throat and sighed. His head ached, too, and he needed some sleep. “If this was a normal situation, I’d have a better idea of what they’d do. They’re usually predictable, but not now. Signal Helena to slip around to the other side of our guest. We’re going to exercise a little intimidation of our own. Maybe that’ll alter their movements up north.”